Review on: The imitation game

Theme

The movie Imitation Game has an 8.1 rating on IMDB and 89% on Rotten Tomatoes showing its class and the level of acting shown by the actors. The movie is based on a true story and it relates different events of the World War II. Major point of focus in the movie is a mathematician from Cambridge who is recruited by the intelligence agency M16 to play his part in the war. Other aspects shown to a minor level in the movie are: priorities in different classes of people on a same mission, gender affection, love, dedication and loyalty.

Storyline

The role of the mathematician Alan Turing is played by Benedict Cumberbatch reflecting the life of an outlier. Three different phases of his life shown in the movie are: boyhood, military time, and post military time with the focus on the middle one. The story of his time in army is telecasted broadly and different events that took place during it are shown. The major task he was assigned during his time in military was to break the code of Germans to gain some aid in war. A team of geniuses was formed and they were to break the code with an unwelcoming challenge of encoding pattern being changed daily.

Lead Character

The personality of the Benedict Cumberbatch suits the character of a genius perfectly with his looks and style. He has played the role of an outlier very efficiently and you can guess the genius inside by watching his acting. He loses his only friend in school who helped him develop his skills and mind as well by exposing him to mazes and some other mentally challenging games and riddles. This all helped him to play the Imitation Game of the Encoding machine Enigma. He dedicated his life to his friend and started building a universal machine that could think just like a human brain and could solve very complex problems easily. He named his machine after his friend’s, Christopher.

Different Phases of Life

During his time in military, he was tasked to break the code of the German messages that transmitted through the radio with a team of geniuses but he worked alone dedicating his whole potential to his machine that would break the code automatically. He had his problems with the team but never showed them and was busy with his machine all the time which created misunderstandings among the team as well. He was also accused of being a spy that was sent to delay the project and let Germans kill the British. He built affection with a girl named Miss Clarke whom he hired to help him in the project once he became in charge by virtue of reaching high command when his supervisors started bugging him to give them results with nothing yet developed during the whole Imitation Game.

He then led the team and got rid of a couple of members whom he thought of being useless and hired a couple of new faces to be the part of team. After a long struggle and some luck, he was able to build the machine and break the code after a couple of months of operations. His team was then able to decode all the messages that Germans transmitted eventually helping the British to win the war. There were a lot of wise and hard decisions including some personal loses and a large number of sacrifices made to win the war. There was a probability of wasting all the hard work and exposing the work publically but they had the presence of mind to keep it hidden and lose some lives for a bigger cause.

Diversity

The movie also reflects the fact of different priorities for different people as he was concerned with the machine and keeping the girl whereas his superiors wanted the results as soon as possible to get the upper hand in the war. In addition of being a genius and different from normal people in life, he was also different in his taste towards gender. He had relations with men in the past life and was not so attracted towards women. During that time, there was a large number of homosexual oriented people and the law avoided any such relation. He was also threatened to be taken off his duty being a gay and this secret was buried at time but was eventually revealed by the authorities and he then went through a medication procedure to change his taste that he preferred over execution. He eventually committed suicide to release himself of the misery of life.

Personal Feedback

The movie is based on a true story and the legendary work of Alan Turing was kept secret for over 50 years. The movie on a whole was classical for any history lover and a good time pass for any other person. There was not a boring effect in the movie and the story was able to maintain the rhythm and interest of the viewer in the story. The acting of characters other than the lead man was also up to the standard of the story and it reflected certain aspects of life very efficiently from bullying in schools to dedicating your life to a purpose giving you an example of a real character from history. The end was not as would have been desired by many but the life is not always how we wish to be. The name Imitation Game suits the storyline too as the whole story was a game to imitate the German coding machine called Enigma. The movie also teaches us some lessons of life like cruel backstabbing of some people affiliated with you whom you never expect to do so. Time is the best teacher and healer in all and following from heart everywhere is quite a good thing to do. Watching this movie is really worth it.

About the author

Jawaria

A media communications student at NUST. An aspiring journalist, filmmaker, entrepreneur and the list goes on.. Sky is the limit I believe. Dreams are what keep me moving on with life and motivate me to look upon the world with a newer perspective every other day.. and to live life to its fullest. Travel and photography are one of the many passions I possess.